So is the objection here the absurd pose (I'd argue this is no less so than Pis who've not run a reaction in a decade posing in a lab coat---almost as good as the 'on the phone' headshots) or that these people are too good looking to be chemists?

The last one looks fine, as it genuinely looks like Trost doesn't really belong there and he's not trying to pretend. Way better than the one of my postdoc boss that they did for some story after a glamor magz pub. They made him go to the lab and stand next to a working rotovap, but it wasn't good enough, so somebody gave him a flask of some metal salt dissolved in water so he could hold it up to the light and look at it with a thoughtful expression. Actually the photo came out really well, but it did cause a lot of smirking in the lab.